THE HUNGRY, HUNGRY SEA URCHIN

COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY

BY LUCY WARNER

JANUARY 22, 2020

THERE IS A PARTICULARLY VORACIOUS SPECIES WHICH HAS ESTABLISHED TOTAL DOMINION ON THE OFFSHORE WATERS FROM NORTHERN CALIFORNIA TO WASHINGTON STATE IN THE US. THE PURPLE SEA URCHIN, WHICH DOES THE SAME THING ON THE OCEAN FLOOR THAT A PLAGUE OF LOCUSTS DO ON LAND, HAS GROWN EXPLOSIVELY IN NUMBERS DUE TO WARMING OF THE WATER AND A DISEASE WHICH KILLED MOST OF ITS’ PRIMARY PREDATOR, A TYPE OF STARFISH. THE RESULT IS THAT A PLANT SPECIES WHICH IS THE FOOD BASIS OF THE LOCAL ECOSYSTEM, KELP, HAS BEEN ALL BUT WIPED OUT. IT IS ALSO A PRIZED SOURCE OF HUMAN FOOD.

WE HAVE SOME GOOD NEWS, THOUGH. THE URCHINS THEMSELVES ARE “DELICIOUS,” AND A DELICACY IN JAPAN. A BUSINESS CALLED “URCHINOMICS” HAS EMERGED, AND IS NOW A HIGHLY PROFITABLE COMPANY, COLLECTING THEM OFF THE OCEAN FLOOR AND “FATTENING THEM UP” IN A FISH FARM LOCATION UNTIL THEY ARE READY TO EAT.

A SIMILAR CASE IN THIS COUNTRY WAS IN THE NEWS SOME YEARS AGO, THAT OF THE NUTRIA, A LARGISH RODENT WHICH HAS TAKEN UP RESIDENCE IN LOUISIANA AND OTHER DEEP SOUTH PLACES, AND THE ASIAN CARP IN THE GREAT LAKES AREA, BOTH OF WHICH HAVE BEEN RECOMMENDED AS TASTY FOOD.

FINALLY, THERE IS THE IDIOTIC INTRODUCTION OF PYTHONS INTO FLORIDA’S EVERGLADES, WITH THE RESULT THAT THEY ARE EATING THE LOCAL DEER AND OTHER MEMBERS OF WHAT HAD BEEN A STABLE ECOSYSTEM. THAT HAPPENS BECAUSE PEOPLE, ALMOST ALWAYS YOUNG MEN, BUY A BABY PYTHON TO KEEP LIKE A PET. NATURALLY, IT WILL BECOME LARGE ENOUGH TO EAT THE FAMILY DOG, AND THEY SEEK TO GET IT OUT OF THE HOUSE. THEY CAN'T BEAR TO KILL IT, HOWEVER, THE POOR LITTLE THING, AND DUMP IT IN OUR NEAREST JUNGLE. IN FLORIDA, STATE OFFICIALS HAVE DECLARED PYTHONS TO BE LEGAL TO HUNT, AND THEY, ALSO, ARE NOW BEING EATEN. BON APPETIT!

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-tactic-in-combating-exploding-sea-urchin-population/

CBS NEWS January 18, 2020, 8:40 AM

New tactic in combating exploding sea urchin population

NEWS VIDEO – DURATION 4:25

Off the Northern California coast, there is a crisis beneath the waves. The kelp forest – seaweed that provided habitat and food for much of life in the ocean – is gone, wiped out by an exploding population of purple sea urchins.

The seabed has become an underwater desert. "This is mostly now a lot of rock, a lot of sea urchin, and not a whole lot of anything else," said research scientist Laura Rogers-Bennett.

sea-urchins-decimating-kelp-forests-promo.jpg

As kelp forests off America's West Coast are being decimated by voracious sea urchins, threatening other species' survival, a unique partnership between scientists and a seafood company hopes to turn a menace into a meal.  CBS NEWS

Since 2014, 95% of the kelp forests from San Francisco to Oregon have disappeared. At the Bodega Marine Laboratory in Bodega Bay, Calif., Rogers-Bennett has been studying the spread of the voracious urchins.

"Underneath is the mouth, and there are five white jaws in the center," she explained to correspondent John Blackstone. "They can chew through rock."

Rogers-Bennett said a warming ocean is believed responsible for upsetting a natural balance of ocean predators that has allowed the purple sea urchins to dominate, and not just in California. Other sea urchins around the world are thriving, too.

"As the oceans have warmed, the urchins seem to be the winners, and they are really thriving and taking off, which is bad news for the kelp forest," Rogers-Bennett said.

sea-urchin-620.jpg

A voracious purple sea urchin.  CBS NEWS

But to Brian Takeda, the CEO of a company called Urchinomics, all those sea urchins look like a business opportunity.

"We convert them from an ecological pest to one of the world's most premium seafood products, or uni, in a matter of six to twelve weeks," Takeda said. "So, we're essentially monetizing the problem species that you want to get rid of."

Sea urchins are considered a delicacy, particularly in Japan. So, Urchinomics is working with the Bodega Marine Laboratory to collect urchins in the ocean, and then fatten them up on seaweed pellets.

Karl Menard runs what amounts to an urchin feedlot.

sea-urchin-feed-lot-620.jpg

A sea urchin feedlot.  CBS NEWS

Blackstone asked, "When you feed them these pellets, are they going to be delicious themselves for us to eat?"

"So far, all indications are that they are a very high quality and very delicious," Menard replied.

Turning a menace into a meal!

By next year, Urchinomics hopes to sell these urchins locally to sushi and seafood restaurants, and to chefs looking to try new recipes.

The Swan Oyster Depot in San Francisco serves sea urchin, and welcomes a new supplier. "You always have to have your eyes towards the future and other possibilities," said general manager Kevin Sancimino.

sea-urchin-digging-in-620.jpg

Dig in!  CBS NEWS

Urchinomics is running similar projects in Taiwan, Japan, Norway and Canada, which are all losing kelp forests to urchins.

Takeda said, "These are restorative urchins, meaning that the more urchins you eat, the better the environment becomes. So, it's a very different value proposition from all of the seafood that we know of today."

Urchinomics hopes Americans can be convinced to eat more urchins, before the urchins eat up even more of a vital part of our ocean environment.

© 2020 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

URCHINOMICS

https://www.fastcompany.com/90409404/now-when-you-get-uni-in-your-sushi-you-could-be-stopping-climate-change

09-30-19   WORLD CHANGING IDEAS

Now when you get uni in your sushi, you could be stopping climate change

Sea urchins love to eat kelp. Kelp loves to sequester carbon. Now sea urchin farmers are removing hungry urchins from kelp fields in California, raising them in captivity to fulfill the world’s hunger for sushi, and saving the kelp to do its important work to help the climate.

Now when you get uni in your sushi, you could be stopping climate change

[Photo: courtesy Urchinomics]

BY ADELE PETERS   4 MINUTE READ

Last week, scientists from the Nature Conservancy stood on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean near Mendocino, California, watching a drone fly over the water as it mapped the disappearing kelp forests along the coast. Kelp—a type of seaweed that can help fight climate change by sequestering carbon and is critical to marine ecosystems—is dying in part because of an explosion of purple urchins in the area. As the Nature Conservancy maps the remaining kelp to find the best places to intervene, the organization plans to also work with a startup to test a new solution to the problem: harvesting the sea urchins to “ranch” them to make uni, a delicacy often used in sushi.

[Photo: Ralph Pace/The Nature Conservancy]

“Urchin ranching is part of a larger strategy to reset the ecosystem and prepare kelp to recover,” says Norah Eddy, the associate director of the oceans program at the Nature Conservancy. Around 90% of the kelp along California’s North Coast has been lost over the last decade. The kelp is sensitive to warming water and suffered when a marine heat wave began in the Pacific in 2013. Then a disease killed off sea stars, a predator of sea urchins, and the population of purple sea urchins exploded. The urchins feed on kelp, and even when they decimate a kelp forest and run out of food, they stick around, able to survive even as their food source disappears. If the kelp begins to grow back, they gobble it up again. The area is left as an “urchin barren,” a desert-like area where seaweed doesn’t grow.

[Photo: Kirk Klausmeyer/The Nature Conservancy/courtesy Urchinomics]

Urchinomics, the startup that will work with the Nature Conservancy to ranch the sea urchins, first learned about the challenge that the species can pose in Japan after the 2011 tsunami. As Japanese fishermen rebuilt their homes and boats, they realized that there was nothing left to fish. “The tsunami washed away the predatory species for urchins, which allowed the urchins to explode 700%,” says Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda, the startup’s CEO. “When the urchin population exploded, it totally decimated one of the world’s most productive coastal ecosystems.”

The startup, based in Norway, realized that technology developed by the Norwegian government could help. Fish feed typically melts into the water more quickly than urchins eat, but the government created a new type of feed that made it possible to grow urchins in aquaculture. The company realized that it could harvest starving sea urchins from the water and raise them to produce uni, the edible part of the animal (technically, it’s a gonad, an organ that produces roe). The company got the rights to the technology and tweaked the ingredients to make them sustainable. “We developed, essentially, a new version of the feed that is super sustainable and can turn a pest urchin from an ecological problem to one of the world’s most premium seafoods on the planet in eight to 12 weeks,” he says.

Sea urchins are destroying kelp forests in many parts of the world. “What typically happens is that when you overfish predatory species—lobsters, crab, cod, herring, all the fish that typically taste good—and you don’t really take into consideration what happens to the rest of the ecosystem when those predators disappear and urchins explode in population,” Takeda says. The company is working to build its first commercial aquaculture systems for markets in Japan, Canada, Norway, and now California. “We are working on multiple properties in California because we realize that California is in a very critical situation,” he says.

A test ranch facility at the UC Davis Bodega Marine Lab. [Photo: courtesy Urchinomics]

Nonprofits partnering with the Nature Conservancy will harvest the sea urchins from the kelp beds and send them to the startup, and when the startup sells the food, it will send part of the proceeds back to the nonprofits to keep the project going. “The idea is that we want to get our donation amount high enough that the restoration effort becomes self-sustaining economically,” he says. “So that way, the more we profit, the better the ecosystem becomes.” Nonprofits can hire commercial divers to harvest the urchins, but the company wanted to work with nonprofits rather than directly with fishermen to ensure that the process was scientifically sound. (Fishermen, motivated by profit, might only remove the larger urchins, but removing the smaller urchins is also critical for the process to work.)

Brian Tsuyoshi Takeda showing a ranched urchin. [Photo: courtesy Urchinomics]

When sea urchins are removed, kelp can quickly rebound. In a trial with the nonprofit Bay Foundation off the coast near L.A., kelp began to regrow within weeks and the tiny new seaweed quickly became a full-grown forest. The quick growth is one of the strengths of kelp as a way to capture CO2. Unlike a slow-growing forest on land (which can also lose carbon in a forest fire), kelp can grow as much as two feet a day, sucking up carbon through photosynthesis as it grows. Dead kelp drifts down to the bottom of the ocean, effectively storing carbon permanently. By one estimate, macroalgae such as kelp sequester 634 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year.

As a food, sea urchins are used not only in Japanese food, but also in French, Italian, and Spanish cuisines, among others. Takeda believes that more chefs will embrace uni as an ingredient when they have the option to buy it from a project that’s actively helping save an ecosystem. “I think by us being able to say that for every urchin that you use from our restorative initiative, you’re essentially helping to restore the kelp forest, that’s a whole new value proposition,” he says. “Because typically if seafood is considered sustainable, you’re still taking from the sea—just taking less, or it’s less bad than what it used to be. In this particular case, you are actually contributing to the betterment or the improvement of the ecosystem.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adele Peters is a staff writer at Fast Company who focuses on solutions to some of the world's largest problems, from climate change to homelessness. Previously, she worked with GOOD, BioLite, and the Sustainable Products and Solutions program at UC Berkeley, and contributed to the second edition of the bestselling book "Worldchanging: A User's Guide for the 21st Century."